The present invention relates in general to apparatus for removing debris from floors in a poultry house or the like, and more particularly to apparatus for scraping poultry manure and similar debris from the floor of a poultry house or the like during one pass along the length of the poultry house.
Poultry houses, such as poultry laying houses and the like, are usually in the form of elongated buildings having a concrete or similar floor with plural rows of poultry receptacles, such as cages or the like, maintained in elevated positions above the floor for easy access by attendants. The cage bottoms are of mesh material and thus droppings and other debris fall through the bottom of the cage or receptacle and onto the floor. In many cases, the floors are arranged with a plurality of elongated shallow rectangular collecting wells or flat bottom troughs, frequently called "pits", extending along parallel axes along the length of the poultry house with pairs or plural pairs of cages or poultry receptacles located above each collecting well or pit.
Prior to development of the poultry house debris removing apparatus of my earlier U.S. Pat. No. 3,625,382, it had been customary to clean beneath the overhanging cages or receptacles manually. The overhanging cages or receptacles made it difficult to readily clean beneath them, and it was necessary for the workers to bend quite low to reach all of the floor area to be cleaned. Of course, after the debris had been gathered from beneath the cages or receptacles, it would then have to be carried out of the poultry house and loaded onto a manure separator, trailer, or other means of removing the manure from the premises.
The poultry floor cleaning apparatus of my earlier U.S. Pat. No. 3,625,382, while representing a considerable improvement over the previously available means for accomplishing this task, nevertheless had the disadvantage of cleaning only one row at a time, by successive filling of a clam shell bucket supported by an extendable boom carried on a tractor or other vehicle device and, after each filling of the clam shell bucket, the operator then needed to drive the tractor or vehicle to the outside of the building and unload the bucket into the trailer or manure spreader for carrying the manure away from the poultry house. This was a very slow operation, with the operator being required to steer the tractor or carrying vehicle and also manipulate the clam shell bucket on a telescopic boom. Also, previous devices devised to attempt to scrape the debris from the floor had difficulty in obtaining adequate traction due to the surface conditions along the floor.
An object of the present invention is the provision of a novel poultry house cleaning apparatus having a plurality of scraper mechanisms for scraping poultry manure and similar debris from beneath plural rows of overhanging poultry cages or containers, capable of cleaning the areas beneath all overhead cage row in the poultry house in one pass along the length of the poultry house.
Another object of the present invention is the provision of an novel poultry house cleaning apparatus as described in the preceding paragraph, having plural scraper structures for scraping the sides and the bottom of rectangular cross-section collecting wells or recessed pits extending along parallel paths along the length of the poultry house.
Another object of the present invention is the provision of an novel poultry house cleaning apparatus as described in the two preceding paragraphs, wherein the scrapers are constructed to allow for variation in the width of the recessed pits or wells in the floor, and have a floating hinge mechanism allowing the scraper edges to maintain full contact with the sides and bottom of the recessed pits.
Another object of the present invention is the provision of novel poultry cleaning house apparatus as described in the preceding paragraphs, having chain means extending lengthwise along the building adjacent the side wall anchored to the building and engaging chain sprockets on the movable scraper mechanism to secure improved traction for transporting the mechanism along the length of the poultry house.
Other objects, advantages and capabilities of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings illustrating a preferred embodiment of the invention.